The Duc de Choiseul and the Invasion of England, 1768–1770

Abstract

When the Seven Years' War was brought to a close in February 1763, France was too exhausted by a long series of defeats to do otherwise than acquiesce in the terms proposed by England. Those terms would undoubtedly have been harder had Pitt still remained in the Cabinet to direct the negotiations; and Lord Bute and his colleagues incurred much abuse in England for not turning the recent brilliant victories to greater profit. Yet in France, though peace itself was welcome, the terms of the Treaty of Paris were looked upon as a deep national humiliation, and perhaps no one felt this more bitterly than the man who helped to negotiate it, viz. the Duc de Choiseul, for it meant the frustration of the hopes he had founded on the recently renewed Family Compact with Spain. Since his accession to power at the close of the year 1758, Choiseul had laboured with great patience and diplomacy to bring Spain into close union with France; this, after three years, he finally succeeded in doing by the famous Family Compact of August 1761, which was intended to unite the several houses of Bourbon in the closest alliance for mutual defence. In this treaty was a clause specially levelled against England (Article 8), and when that fact became known in this country, the English ministers, who in October 1761 had driven Pitt from office rather than allow him to declare war on Spain, were compelled to do so themselves in the following January 1762. It is well known that the results of that war were everywhere disastrous to Spain and brought fresh losses to France, so that by the autumn of 1762 both countries were earnest in desiring peace, and a treaty was ratified at Paris in February 1763.